SHE
by sweet-taboos
Summary: Starting with ancient fairy tales, stepmother's have usually been presented quite negatively. Kagome's stepmother is no exception. [One Shot]


**Authors Notes**: I suddenly had the urge to write a completely different story of Kagome's life and everything around her. Some of the story might be the same as the series, others may not.

**Story Line**: The story is about Kagome and her sister Linda's, father marrying an evil step-mother, who always picks on Kagome and not Linda. And instead of Kagome's father being dead, it's her mother. And Kagome's not Japanese, there American. I know the story line is very odd, including very strange, but like I said, "I had the urge to write a different story for once." As the story goes on, you'll see what I'm talking about.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Inuyasha or their characters.

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_Starting with ancient fairy tales, stepmothers have usually been presented quite negatively, Kagome's stepmother is not exception. But Kagome is determined to outwit her stepmother. . . ._

**SHE**

By: Nekiochan

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"Just where do you think your going?" she said.

"To the bathroom," I said.

"No, your not," she said. "Not before you wash these dishes."

"This is a matter of urgent necessity," I said. I hated that even my going to the bathroom had to be questioned.

"Don't want to hear it," she said. "I'm sick and tired of emergency, emergency every night after dinner. Get to that sink."

"I'll wash the dishes," Linda said. She got up and started to clear off the table. I slipped out of the kitchen. The angry voice that followed me down the hall.

"Linda, don't keep letting your sister get away with everything."

"I don't mind - really, Dourine," Linda said.

"That girl's just too damn lazy. . . ." I shut the bathroom door to muffle the sounds of her grievances against me. She didn't like me. She never had. And I didn't care. Stepmothers. . . . !

Searching the bottom of the hamper for the science fiction magazine I had hidden beneath the dirty clothes, I sat on the toilet and began to read to get out of this world - as far from her as I could get.

From the day she had walked into our house she'd been on to me. I was lying on my bed when she and Daddy pushed into my room without knocking. Our eyes locked. She didn't speak. Neither did I.

I was in panic. Daddy had forbidden me to read fairy tales. "At fifteen years old. You too old," he'd say. He wanted me to read school books. I hadn't had time to hide my book of fairy tales beneath my mattress as I usually did. I curled up around it, praying to keep his eyes from it.

But Daddy was only showing her the apartment. So she had to turn to inspect my almost bare room. When she looked back at me, her eyes said: What are you doing reading in this miserable room instead o doing something useful around this terrible house? My eyes answered: What's it to you?

They left the room the way they'd come. Abruptly. Hearing their footsteps going toward the kitchen, I got up and followed. Linda was in the kitchen, washing fish for our dinner. When they went in, Linda looked up and smiled.

"What a lovely girl," Dourine said, and the shock of her American accent went through me, What was Daddy doing with an American women! "She's got to be the prettiest child I ever did see. My name is Dourine," she said.

From the first time she had chosen Linda over me. Maybe because Linda was pretty, with her long, thick hair and clear brown velvet skin. Or maybe because Linda was two years older - almost ready to go to college.

"Your daddy's friend," Linda said, batting her long eyelashes the way she always did whenever someone paid her a compliment. "I didn't know Daddy had a lady friend." Daddy gave Linda a quick look and she changed to: "My name is Linda. And that's- _she pointed to where I stood in the doorway_- " the baby. Her name is Kagome."

But Dourine had already turned to inspect the kitchen. And suddenly I saw our kitchen and the sweat of embarrassment almost drowned me: the sink was leaking and had a pan under it to catch the dirty water; the windowpanes were broken and stuffed with newspaper to keep out winter; the linoleum was worn, showing the soft wood beneath.

And she wore furs. Our mother had never worn furs. Not even when Daddy had lots of money. People from the tropics didn't think of wearing things like furs. And the way Dourine looked around - nose squinched up, mouth pulled back - judging us, West Indians.

Daddy stood in the middle of the kitchen, quieter than usual - big, broad, handsome in his black overcoat, around his arm the black crepe band of mourning. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gray wool suit, And she hit out at him: "Damn, Harry, how can you live like this!"

Linda stopped smiling then. Daddy's eyebrows quivered. My mouth was tight with satisfaction. Daddy had a mean temper. I waited for him to blast her out of our house and our of our lives. She had socked us where we hurts most - our pride.

"How do you mean?" Daddy had said. "We ain't live so. You see me restaurant. . . . ." So he had known her while our mother as still alive. " . . .I lose it," he said. "Me wife dead. I sell me house, me furniture, me car. I - I - me friend let me stay here for a time - but only for a short time." He was begging! I hated that he stood there begging.

"If it's only one minute, that's one minute too damn long," she said.

Lifting my head from the science fiction magazine to turn a page, I heard the sounds of pots banging against pans in the kitchen. And I heard Dorine's footsteps in the hall. I waited for the knob to turn on the bathroom door. She sometimes did that. But this time she went on into the living room. A short time later I heard the television playing.

It had been two years since the pointing, the ordering, the arranging and rearranging of our lives had begun. She had forced us to leave our old free apartment and move into her big one with it's big kitchen and all those dozens of pots and pans for all things and all occasions. We had to listen to her constant: "Cleanliness is next to godliness," and "A good housekeeper has a place for everything and keeps everything in it's place." Like who told her that we wanted most in life was to be housekeepers? I didn't!

Daddy let he get away with everything. He stayed out most days looking for work, And he spent evenings gambling with his friends. The times he spent at home he spent with her - laughing and joking in their bedroom. She entertained him to keep him there. I'd see her flashing around the house in her peach - colored frilly mules, her big white teeth showing all across her face, her gown falling away to expose plump brown knees. Guess that's what he liked - that combination of peach satin and smooth brown skin.

She worked as a singer. Sometimes for weeks she'd be out on the road. Then she'd come home with her friends and they'd do all that loud American talking and laughing. She sometimes brought us lovely things back form "the road." Blouses, underwear, coats. She won Linda's affection like that and might have won mine if I hadn't heard a man friend say to her one day: "Dourine, it's bad enough you got yourself hooked up with that West Indian. But how did you manage to get in a family way?"

"Big Red," she called him. "I'm in love."

"With all of 'em?" he asked.

"They come with the deal?" she said.

"Some deal," he answered.

"You don't need to worry none, Big Red," she said, "They earns their keep."

She saw mw standing in the doorway then, and her big eyes stretched out to almost where I stood. Guilty. Her mouth opened. I walked away. I had heard enough. I went right in and told Linda. "That's what she wants us around for," I said. "To be her maids."

"Kagome," Linda said. "She probably didn't mean it that way at all."

"What other way could she mean it?" I asked. Innocent Linda. She never saw the evil in the hearts and minds of people.

But from that day Dourine picked on me. When I vacuumed the hall, she called me to show me specks I could hardly see and made me vacuum over again. When I cleaned my room, she went in and ran her fingers over the woodwork to show me how much dust I had left behind. "That ain't the way we do things around here," she liked to say. "Do it right or don't do it at all." As though I had a choice!

"Trying to work me to death, that's what she's doing," I complained to Linda.

"But why don't you do things right the first time, Kagome?" Linda said. I could only stare at her. My sister!

We had always been close. Linda hadn't minded doing things for me before Dourine came, as long as I read to her. Linda never had time for things like reading. She knew she was pretty and kept trying to make herself perfect. Linda washed her blouses and underwear by hand. She ironed her clothes to defeat even the thought of a wrinkle, And she had always done mine along with hers, just to have me read to her.

But now our stepmother who had turned our father against us, had turned my sister against me! Well, if Linda wanted to be a maid, that was her business. I did enough when I vacuumed the hall and cleaned my room. If Linda had to take Dourine's side against me, then let Dourine read to her. I was satisfied to do my reading myself - by myself.

Sitting too long on the toilet, I felt the seat cut into my thighs. I got up to un-stick myself and leaving the toilet un-flushed - not to give away that I had finished - I sat on the closed stool, listening to what ought to have been sounds of glass against glass, china against china.

The quiet outside the bathroom unsettled me. I usually knew when Linda had finished with the dishes. I always heard when she passed to join Dourine in the living room. They played the television loud, thinking to make me jealous, making me feel unneeded, pretending not to care that I had shut myself out from them and that I might go to my room without even a goodnight, But I hadn't heard Linda pass!

The television kept playing. I strained to hear the program to tell the time. It was too low. Getting up, I thought out to see how things were but sat down again. Better to give Linda a little more time. I started another story.

I had only half finished when my concentration snapped. The television had been turned off. I tried to but couldn't get back into the story. Instead I sat listening, hoping to pick up some sounds from the silent home. What time was it?

Getting up, I put my ear to the door. No outside sound. Unlocking the door, I cracked it open and peeked out. The hallway was dark! Everyone had gone to bed! How late was it? Taking off my shoes, I started to tiptoeing down toward my room, Then from the dark behind me I heard: "Aint no sense in all that creeping around, Them dishes aint got no ears." I spun around. A light went on and there she was, lying on a chaise longue that had been pulled up to the living room door. "That's right, it's me," she said. "And it's one o'clock in the morning, Whish gives you plenty of time to wash every dish in the sink squeaking clean before one o'clock noon."

Tears popped out of my eyes as she marched me down past my room, past the room where Linda slept, into the kitchen. Tears kept washing my cheeks as I washed dishes. She sat and inspected everyone, acting as though we were playing games. If we were, I expected it to go on forever.

_She tricked me - and she had won._

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**One Shot**


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